Ok. Hopefully you've used the crank for the last time getting the hundred yards of string off of your tuning pegs.
I've got all six of them detached from the head now.
Now we will take a look at the saddle and the bridge pins.
These simply lift out and on a steel string acoustic what you'll see is usually a bead head on the end.
In a bit I am going to talk about the differences between a steel string and a nylon .
Particularly on the bridge is where they differ but the technique I am going to teach you for tying off the strings on the head.
The principles apply to either nylon or steel string guitars and works regardless of what size strings you use etcetera.
This is a pretty universal technique.
Ok. We are done with these and one editorial comment if you're ever tempted to donate your old strings to new students
don't do that to them, spend the extra five dollars and send them a new set.
Actually once you begin using this technique there won't be enough string leftover to send to them anyway.
Let's get started with putting a new string on.
For no particular reason I start with the first string, the smallest one.
The order you do this in is not critical.
The bead head goes back down in this hole where your bridge pin was and then one thing to pay attention to is your bridge pin will typically have
a grooved slack in it and that's where the string is going to come out of the hole alongside the bridge pin.
So what we will do is put the bead head in there and the pin in alongside of it
and then before you punch that in somewhat tight begin to bring the slack back out of that string.
You want the head to come out as far as it's going to before you lock it in place because we want this slack out before we go any further.
We don't want that coming in later after we're trying to tune up.
Then coming up to the head of the guitar I like to pinch the string down in the nut
and I've done something here that I want to point out and that's the position of this pin before we start threading the string into the pin.
What I want you to see is that I've turned these pins so that the hole inside the pin is facing a specific direction.
Basically from about a one o'clock to a seven o'clock position and then what I'm very specifically going to do is bring the strings up the center of
the head everything is going to cascade up through between the pins and then work toward the outside of the head after they've gone past the pin.
So it'd be like a waterfall effect coming up the middle, going around and coming back down through the pins at an angle.
A close up of that is right here and this is an example for the right side of the guitar.
The string will come up and angle back just a little bit through that hole and there's a very good reason why we're doing that.
I'll attempt to draw this for you.
After we do this, after we thread the hole we're going to come around like this and go through the hole and then we're going to come around another
half turn and tuck that string right underneath the entry of the string and that's it.
We are not going to do a lot of winding or anything else.
There is only going to be one half of a twist there and what that looks like up close is bringing the string here holding the tension out and from the
inside coming around back through the hole, grabbing it, grabbing it again and by the way this works on all six strings.
Some people are concerned the smaller strings are harder to hold onto and that they tend to slip more.
When you see how this locks into place you will realize why the size of the string doesn't matter.
So there's the beginning of what I would call the "S" turn, we're coming down through there, pull the slack right out of it, you don't need anymore
than what it takes to get to the hole.
Now we'll come back around the outside of the guitar or the outside of the head.
I like to come in underneath when I tuck under the string and pull the rest of the slack out of the string there
and then take a deliberate bend out or up from this perspective.
What we are doing when we do this is the main part of the string is now laying on top of a very small part of string that's already gone through the
hole that locks it in place and you don't need multiple winds to achieve that lock.
As I begin to crank the string down it lays down on it's own tail harder and harder and it will not slip.
Now one other note.
Something I want you to think about when you're laying strings on here that will not only help your guitar stay in tune better
but it will also minimize string buzz.
Looking at the guitar flat like this the string needs to ride very close to the fret board all along the guitar.
What you want to have happen is at the nut the string needs to at least some amount take a bend down from this perspective
or back if you are holding the guitar this way.
The idea being that at the bridge you want some minimal amount of angle.
What can happen is if the string comes across the nut and then flies straight out to a peg then you can imagine
the string will have a tendency to buzz in the groove of the nut.
We don't want that. So it eliminates buzz and it helps just a little bit to lock in your tuning.
This is a drawing of the same view of the guitar that I was just talking about.
This would be the neck and your frets would be along here and this is the pin that we've just threaded the string through the hole on
and what you really want to see is for the string to come along the surface of the neck, hit the nut
and then rather than go out straight it needs to angle down to the pin.
Now some of this is limited by how your guitar is made.
If the guitar is made with a very shallow angle then it's going to be up to you to make sure that when you come out of that hole
you wind that string underneath and get a bend.
This is another reason why to not wrap a lot of string around here because it takes away some of the control where the string is tied on here.
So that's the idea.
We want to bend the string a little and hopefully that's at a downward angle to the head and don't worry about these wavy lines this is common
with Esteban guitars but that's ok, I'm sure you probably have a better guitar but this is what we want to accomplish with the strings.